Page 4 of The Mer-Mate
It sounded like English. Not quite like listening to words above the surface. Clearer. I want to stick my finger in my ear and wiggle, because it sounds like the voice is coming from the shape hovering in front of me.
Which would be crazy.
A pop of laughter escapes my throat like champagne being opened. I experiment, opening and closing my mouth, watching the last of the bubbles leave my lungs. “Like a fish.”
“I am not a fucking fish,” the shape says sharply, and I freeze again.
He—I can’t be positive, but a voice that deepfeelsmale—moves closer to me. Hands tilt my head. They’re firm, dominant, but careful. Somethingcold slithers against my squinted eyelid, then the other, and I’m released to float free.
“Open.”
I obey, and the world around me resolves into clarity.
Holy fuck, he has a tail.
This isn’t happening. I wasn’t on my boat. I was on a dive, and I wasn’t paying attention to my gauges. Nitrogen narcosis has set in and I’m hallucinating. That has to be it.
Any second now, Sebastian or Ursula will show up and break into song.
I reach up to my mouth, expecting to find my regulator’s mouthpiece, but all I feel is my lips.
This isn’t a hallucination.
My heart crowds into my throat as my hands fall away from my mouth, and I ask the question I already know the answer to.
“What are you?”
A rush of sound, like a waterfall over a short drop onto smooth rocks, flows from his mouth. “Right. You would not understand,” he says. “I am a merman.”
My blood lights up in my veins. He’s just like the stories. Half fish, half man. No other way to describe him—he’s definitely a man. His eyes are disproportionately large for his face in an otherworldly way. A bluish sheen shimmers from his skin, and his torso tapers to a powerful tail that ripples with muscle.
That’s where the similarities to the stories end. Those all had merfolk with scales and gills. There are no gills on his neck, or anywhere else Ican see. His tail isn’t covered in scales, either. It’s more like the skin of a dolphin, though it’s no colour of mammal I’ve ever seen in a lifetime at sea.
Not a fish. Accurate.
My brain is spinning. Where are we? Why aren’t I cold? How am I not dead?
Most of all:I wasn’t crazy.
The merman swims to me, the soft blue from the cave walls shimmering the closer he gets.
Wait. That's where we are. In a cave. A glowing, underwater cave. This part of the Pacific has no species with bioluminescence like this, but it’s a beautiful way to light a cave.
And so eco friendly!More strange laughter erupts from my throat.
Almost dying has warped my sense of humour.
I tear my gaze away from the merman to glance at my bare arms. “Where are my clothes?”
“You are breathing underwater, and you want to know where your clothes are?”
“I need to start somewhere.”
The way he tilts his head has his dark green hair waving around him like kelp in the tides. “They were dragging you down, and will only hinder you in the depths.”
Makes sense. Last I checked, bra and underwear didn’t add too much drag, and those are nowhere to be seen. I’ve never been shy of my body, though, and he seems more curious than anything, so I put my nakedness out of my mind.
“What did you do to my eyes?” I ask next.
